Page 95 of His Improper Lady

“No. God, no,” Tom murmured, leaning his head against hers as his hands slid up and down her arms. “Your touch is...beyond pleasurable.”

He tilted her face up and kissed her, his mouth telling her better than words the wild feelings that rippled through him. Finally, he broke from her, his voice hoarse. “Enough. I have to be inside you. Now.”

Kicking off the garments that had fallen to his ankles, he lifted her up, and Desiree wrapped her legs around him, so that his pulsing member was pressed against the very place he most desired to be, slick and hot. Tom kissed her neck and shoulders as he walked almost blindly to the bed, and they fell onto it.

He pushed inside her at once, too far gone in his passion to tease either of them any longer, and Desiree responded with the same frenzied eagerness. Her nails raked his back as he began to move, his strokes deep and smooth, until at last his climax rolled over him like thunder. Tom cried out, feeling Desiree clamp tightly around him, her own release rippling through her.

Tom sank onto the bed, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her over onto him. He lay there panting, her head resting over his heart, her hair spreading over his chest and arm. And he knew, with his body as much as his mind, that he could not live without this woman.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

DESIREE AWAKENED THE following morning in a buoyant mood. She rose and put on the plain dark carriage dress she wore for traveling, and did up her hair in a simple style—her mind on tonight and the ease with which such a style could be undone.

She wanted, of course, to discover whatever she could about her parents at the cottage; the compelling pull inside her was impossible to ignore. But she could not help but look forward, as well, to the night before her, when she and Tom could be alone, free to be together the entire night without considerations of family or any other obligations. For precisely that opportunity, she had been sure to pack her laciest, most beguiling nightgown.

Downstairs, she was pleased to find Brock at the breakfast table. She had not seen him the night before, so she had yet to tell him the discoveries they had made. He listened, frowning, as she described what she and Tom had done the day before (leaving out, of course, the most personal details).

“Desiree, I’m not sure what you think you’re going to find out,” he said when she finished. “It all sounds most peculiar, I’ll admit, but...”

“I know. I realize we may not discover anything that will help us, but I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I would always wonder what we might have found.”

“Yes, but traveling alone with Quick...” He scowled. “You do understand how it will look, don’t you?”

Desiree cocked an eyebrow. “Yes. Scandalous. But when have I ever been anything but scandalous? I’ve spent my entire adult life being chaste, but you know good and well that everyone already assumes that I’m a scarlet woman. I’m sorry, but I’m not a lady, Brock, however much you wanted me to be one.”

“Desiree, no,” Brock said, taken aback. “I have never wanted you to be anything but exactly what you want. I didn’t send you to finishing school because I wanted to mold you into a lady. I wanted to give you the opportunity to...to enter the world that you deserve, the one that should be yours by birth. You are a lady and my much-loved sister, and I would never regard you as anything but that. If you want Quick, then that is what I want for you. He doesn’t deserve you, but I can’t think of any man who would. I just don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to be disappointed.”

“I won’t be disappointed,” Desiree told him. “Do you honestly think I’m not capable of catching the man I set my cap for?”

Brock had to smile. “Well, no, not when you put it that way.”

“That’s why I’d like you to do something for me, if you would.”

“What?” He looked wary.

“Nothing horrid.” Desiree laughed. “Do you have a pencil and paper?” Her brother reached into an inside pocket and handed her a small notebook and a pencil stub, and Desiree opened it to the first blank page and began to write. “I want you to look at this for me. You know a good deal more about this sort of thing than I. I want it, but I’d like to make sure it’s a good investment.”

Brock looked at what she had written, and his brows sailed upward. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.” She leaned forward. “I know, Brock. I know in here.” Desiree tapped her closed fist over her heart. “He is the only man for me.”

Her brother looked at her for a long moment, then said, “I told you I remember him from the days with Falk.”

“Yes.”

“What I didn’t tell you was that I saw it—I knew he was important, valuable, somehow to you. I thought it was something that would happen back then, something immediate. But I saw it again the day you brought him here.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Desiree asked, puzzled.

“I didn’t want to influence you. I didn’t want you to think that this was preordained. I’m—it’s easy to let what I see rule me. I’m not sure I can trust it.”

“Even after all this time?”

Brock nodded. “Yes. And when it concerns you, I must be especially careful. I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“Well, this is no mistake,” Desiree told him, putting her hand over his on the table. “I’m certain, Brock. I love him. And it’s for life.”

WHEN DESIREE ARRIVED at Tom’s office an hour later, he greeted her with a long, burning kiss.